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Thursday, January 13, 2005

Proof of Concept Review

The latest offering from AiT/Planet Lar consists of six short comics vignettes framed by the concept that these are story ideas Young is pitching to his agent. Each short story is utterly different (from each other and really in general) in both concept and artwork, and I think most would be quite interesting fleshed out into a longer format.

The two I would especially like to see more of are “For the Time Being” and “Emancipating Lincoln.” The former follows a crew of time and space travelers whose captain is accidentally jarred out of the space-time realm and into a state of god-like, evil omniscience. We leave the concept as he challenges the crew to keep up with him, saying, “I’m gonna really mess with the human race. Stop me, if you can.”

“Emancipating Lincoln” is set in 2437 in a future where everyone bears a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, but has no knowledge of the man or his life. Now a private investigator has a case he just has to take – figuring out the mystery behind a newly discovered five-dollar bill. You know, the one with Lincoln’s mug on it.

Of course if these two concepts don’t strike your fancy, there’s also a vampire hunt, zombie dinosaurs, and a group of kids who discover a dimensional porthole.

The only real flaw to Proof of Concept, as I see it, is the treatment of the last conception – “The Bod.” Young really should have stopped after the first installment of this concept, leaving the reader at a similar spot the others did. It was a great cliffhanger, letting the reader’s imagination run and with the thought, hey, this has potential (much like the other stories in the book). Unfortunately, this comic idea was oodles longer than the rest of the “shorts” and proved, at least for me, that no, this concept doesn’t have much potential. My suggestion would have been to pull the plug on this one earlier, and stick in another great Young springboard like the others.

Overall, however, I enjoyed this romp through Young’s imagination. It is, after all, quite an imagination.